After Alice came to her hypothesis about the nature of class seeds, she felt a whirlwind of excited thoughts start to spin around in her head. If classes were actually magic seeds that had been altered in some way, she had made a huge step towards understanding how the System worked. She had never previously come across the idea of classes being based on magic seeds, because it was so far outside of her previous guesses about the nature of mana and the System that she simply wouldnât have ever thought of the idea.
Then, Alice took a few deep breaths as she did her best to shake off her excitement. Even if class seeds and magic seeds looked like they were close to same thing when she had used {Expanding Comprehension}, she needed to do more testing, to make sure her ideas were correct. She also needed to figure out what this actually meant in concrete terms. If class seeds were actually some kind of weird, deformed magic seed, what were the notable differences between a class seed and a magic seed? What were the similarities?
Alice frowned, going back over her thoughts and memories as she tried to highlight the differences between a magic seed and a class seed.
First, one needed to go through a mana baptism to use a magic seed. A mana baptism formed a mage core, and was a fundamental requirement to use âmagicâ in the truest sense of the word. Class seeds didnât require one to go through a mana baptism at all. Instead, one could use them safely with zero danger. So the fundamental danger each kind of seed posed to the user were very different, because class seeds were much less strict in their requirements than a magic seed was.
Second, class seeds were much, much weaker than a magic seed, especially at first. Any Class provided few benefits before one started getting to a high level, and before level 50, most classes were still strictly inferior to magic seeds. However, class seeds continued to âgrowâ as people took actions related to their class. If Alice explored Magic, for example, her [Explorer of Magic] class would keep levelling up, granting her new abilities every so often.
Magic seeds never did this. Once they were formed, they were basically totally finished unless Perks or Achievements started to boost them up. Therefore, while the initial power level of a class seed was much, much lower than a magic seed, they seemed to have a much higher growth limit, but it also took much more time, effort, and work to get there.
Third, in Aliceâs vision trip with {Expanding Comprehension}, she had noticed that magic seeds seemed to keep generating mana without any need for external resources or input. This correlated pretty well with her tests in manaless rooms, where she had proven unable to find any real âsourceâ for the mana a magic seed produced. As far as Alice could tell, magic seeds seemed to just never heard of the law of conservation of energy, and had no intention whatsoever of following them. While class seeds also worked without external fuel sources, they grew weaker without them, which was unlike a magic seed.
Alice also realized that in her vision, a class seed would keep consuming more mana from its surroundings as long as it was related to the seed. There seemed to be no point at which a class seed stopped absorbing mana, actually. Maybe that was how a class gained levels? They just⦠kept absorbing mana?
Alice also didnât understand why class seeds absorbed mana only after someone took an action related to their class. Why didnât class seeds just keep absorbing mana every second? If absorbing mana was what made classes level up, there was no logical reason to tie mana absorption to classes at all. Someone taking the time to train themselves in the art of swordsmanship would obviously get better at swinging a sword around, but it didnât make sense that swinging a sword around gave them more mana, even if that mana was used to fuel magic abilities vaguely related to swordsmanship. Why did class seeds gain mana and level up from doing things totally unrelated to magic?
Alice frowned, wrestling with various ideas as she tried to come to a conclusion on how levelling up actually worked, before she gave up on thinking about the idea. She just didnât have enough information to guess yet. Finally, she began thinking of Borisâs situation again.
Couldshe use {Broken Seed} on a class? She had never thought of trying, but thanks to {Seed Creator} she was able to break other peopleâs magic seeds, as long as they were willing to let her. And if classes and magic seeds were fundamentally the same idea with minor revisions, she should at least theoretically be able to break a class seed the same way she could break a magic seed.
Which was a very strange idea. As far as Alice knew, nobody in this world had any way to remove a class once it had been acquired. A [Priest of the System] could change whether a class was a primary or secondary class, but had no fundamental ability to remove a class. Once someone had a class, it was permanent. Granted, there was zero reason to remove a class once someone had one â classes were never bad for the user, even if they were sometimes useless. However, if {Broken Seed} was able to remove any magic seed, and classes were fundamentally magic seeds, could {Broken Seed} outright delete a class?
Alice tried feeding the idea of breaking a class seed into {Safety Analysis}, with the idea of removing her [Fisherwoman] class, pushing through her worsening headache from using mental Perks over and over again. Alice was willing to delete the class if it would give her more information, since she had no real intention of ever developing the class any further than level 3. To be honest, on most days Alice largely forgot that she even possessed this secondary class, because it was so utterly useless to her. She hated fishing, and was no longer in a position where she needed to desperately scramble to feed herself. And it didnât offer her any useful Perks, either â she was still seven levels away from getting her first Perk in the class, and she doubted she was ever going to acquire those levels, or use the Perk even if she got it.
Her Perk informed her that destroying her [Fisherwoman] class was safe. Of course, that could also just mean that she would accomplish literally nothing during the experiment. She asked {Safety Analysis} what would happen if she deleted the class seed from Boris. After all, if Boris having access to the System before he was supposed was creating all of these weird problems for him, maybe she could outright remove the Class? She thought that might work better than just cutting Boris off from mana. If it worked, hopefully Boris would just lose his Status Screen until he turned six, and then he would unlock it again like normal. That would be a much better solution than Aliceâs first idea, which was just to cut off Borisâs access to mana. Cutting off Borisâs mana would indeed stop Boris from levelling up, and Alice thought it was likely that it would prevent Borisâs problems from getting worse. However, it also prevented him from levelling up and forced him to become reliant on expensive enchantments to stay alive, and both of those were problems in the long run. Not to mention, it wouldnât fix whatever problems Boris already had, because the mana accumulation and class seeds in Borisâs body wouldnât decrease no matter how long she cut him off from mana.
As Alice contemplated breaking Borisâs class seed, a feeling of suffocating dread crushed her as {Safety Analysis} blared out warning signals. Alice shivered as the feeling started to dissipate.
Clearly, removing Borisâs class seed was a bad idea. Why though?
Alice took a moment to collect herself, before she began brainstorming reasons for why destroying Borisâs Class seed would be dangerous.
There were a few possible conclusions. First, there could be some sort of fundamental difference between primary and secondary classes, making one safe to break down while the other wasnât. Alice wasnât absolutely sure if Borrisâs farming class was a primary class, but given how fast it was picking up levels it was probably a primary class. Alice would investigate this later, when her headache got better. Since {Safety Analysis} was fairly safe and easy to use, Alice could run lots of experimental ideas through the Perk and see what was and wasnât dangerous when she had more time.
Alternatively, Boris might not be in danger because he had a class seed. Instead, perhaps his class seed wasnât sucking up ENOUGH mana? Whenever someone was exposed to enough mana for a fair amount of time, they would undergo a mana baptism, where they had a small chance of becoming a Mage and a much greater chance of dying on the spot. This was a good reminder of how dangerous mana actually was. Maybe class seeds worked to suck up mana, and the fact Borisâs mana seed wasnât sucking up enough mana was what was causing his weird personality changes?
Alice wasnât entirely sure how that would work, but it seemed as plausible as any other theory she could come up with. Alternatively, maybe Boris could actually go through a mana baptism as a result of the mana buildup in his body or something. Alice had never heard of anyone going through a baptism because there was too much mana inside of their body, and she had no clue whether it was even possible. However, if it was possible, it made perfect sense that Borisâs situation was becoming increasingly bizarre and dangerous as time passed on, and it also made sense that deleting his Class Seed would put him in massive danger. After all, even if his class seed wasnât working as it was supposed to, removing it entirely might speed up the potentially dangerous mana baptism Boris was at risk of going through. Being forced into a process with a 4% survival rate definitely seemed dangerous enough for {Safety Analysis} to blare a bunch of warning signals at her.
Or her theory could be totally wrong. Alice was in totally unfamiliar territory at this point, there was just too much she didnât know. Alice sighed in frustration, before she shook her head again. At the very least, it seemed like trying to remove a class seed with {Broken Seed} would do something if she tried using it on Boris. She would figure out how to test her ideas some more when her headache settled down a bit, and when she had better ideas for testing things without putting Boris in danger.
Finally, Alice stepped out of the manaless room. The moment she did, mana flooded into her body, and level up notifications started ringing like crazy.
You have leveled up!
Survivor: 50 -> 51, Explorer of Magic: 56 -> 59, Scholar: 43 -> 51, Scientist: 45 -> 52
Seeker of Truth (III->IV) (Rarity: 9 -> 10)
You have glimpsed something that not many know. While you may not understand what it means, you have certainly seen something that others have not.
+1 Primary Class Slot(s), 200% -> 400% class experience for all research-related classes, +10% -> 25% Effect of Intelligence, +15% -> 30% Effect of Perception. Your ability to see Mana is significantly enhanced. You will no longer experience any interference at all when attempting to observe phenomena involving mana, and will be able to see perfectly clearly.
You may choose one Perk of yours and upgrade it, provided it is from a research based class (this part of the Perk description will delete itself after you make your choice)
Scientific Discoveries (Rarity: N/A)
An Achievement Created by the âFor Science!â perk. It currently has one successful experiment catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.
+20% class experience for all research related classes, +5% bonus to mental attribute growth
Alice grinned to herself as she read the details of her new upgrades. It had been quite a while since she had seen her [Explorer of Magic] class gain so much experience at once. She was nearly at the point of getting another Perk for the class, even if it might take a while to get the final level. She had also gotten another level in [Survivor] for some reason, although she wasnât quite sure why, and had gotten a fair number of levels in [Scholar] and [Scientist].
Most importantly, {Seeker of Truth} had been upgraded again, and the experience bonus she got from the Achievement and increased from 200% to 400%. Her bonus experience from her biggest experience point boost had doubled in one sitting, which felt absolutely surreal to her. Her total Xp bonus to [Explorer of Magic] was sitting at around 605% now, with the combined bonuses from {Scientific Discoveries}, {Seeker of Truth}, {Bookworm}, {Seed Creator}, and {Baptized by Broken Mana}. She was willing to bet that was a big part of the reason she had gotten a whole three levels in [Explorer of Magic] at once was because of the massive upgrade to XP gain rate she had just gotten. The boost to [Explorer of Magic] also provided a few minor attribute boosts, which were always nice, and gave her the option to âupgradeâ one Perk of her choice. Alice had also gotten one experiment successfully finished, finally enabling her {For Science!} Perk. Alice wasnât sure which of her three experiments the Perk had deemed âsuccessfully concluded,â but she had more time to experiment with the Perk and analyze it in the future. For now, the bonus to levelling speed was nice, if dwarfed by her other Achievement from this experiment.
Finally, both [Scholar] and [Scientist] had gone above level 50. She had three new Perks to choose, and Alice was more than happy to see both classes pick up a bunch of Levels.
Out of curiosity, Alice focused on the âPerk upgradeâ ability she had gotten from upgrading {Seeker of Truth}. When she focused on it, she saw a list of Perks pop up in front of her eyes, listing all of the Perks she had available from [Scientist], [Scholar], and [Explorer of Magic]. If she focused on any Perk, she could get a detailed explanation of what an âupgradeâ to the Perk would look like.
Hmm⦠upgrading {Expanding Comprehension} just boosts the amount of mana conversion ratio I can get per use of the Perk, which isnât that great. The main reason I use the Perk is for the information I can get â the other effects are just bonuses, and not as important. Hmm⦠upgrading most of my Perks can give me something nice, but not too impressive. However, Iâm also not sure what happens if I use an âupgradedâ Perk for Perk combination later. Do I keep the upgrade, or is it lost? Alice frowned, wondering if she should save the Perk upgrade for later to avoid losing it during a Perk combination, before she turned back to her available Perks.
Finally, she decided that saving it wasnât ideal, mostly because she saw a useful-looking upgrade for one of her other Perks. Unlike most of her other Perks, Alice wasnât sure if she would ever bother combining this Perk with another one, because its effects were just too critical to her current research, and the uncertain nature of Perk combination made her skeptical of losing it.
Broken Seed
Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 35 or higher
You gain the ability to 'break' one magic seed every month (Now once every two weeks due to the influence of the {Seed Creator} Achievement) without harming the body of the target, allowing the target to switch out one magic seed for another.
(Note â can only break seeds of others with their consent.)
After eyeing the old text for one of the most critical parts of Aliceâs experiments, she used her Perk upgrade to change the Perk.
Broken Seed (Upgraded)
Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 35 or higher, (Upgraded via {Truth Seeker} Achievement)
You gain the ability to 'break' one magic seed every week (Now once every four days due to the influence of the {Seed Creator} Achievement) without harming the body of the target, allowing the target to switch out one magic seed for another.
(Note â can only break seeds of others with their consent.)
The Perk upgrade drastically reduced the cooldown time for {Broken Seed}, allowing Alice to use it once every four days instead of once every two weeks. This was a massive upgrade, since Alice was more than tripling the frequency she could use the Perk. Given how messed up her attempts at creating a System seed had been, Alice suspected she would need far more time and effort to create a working âSystem Seedâ than any other kind of magic seed she had created so far. Only being able to practice once every two weeks would have slowed down her experiments to a crawl, which was far from ideal.
This âPerk upgradeâ directly fixed this problem, and also let Alice have more leeway to experiment with breaking down class seeds without sacrificing too much time. Alice grinned, thinking of new experiments she could run if she had more leeway in using {Broken Seed}. For example, if Alice got a class, deleted it, and then acquired the class again, what would happen? Would she return to the same level she previously had, or would she restart from level one? What about Perks acquired from the class? If Alice had a secondary class at level 10 and then deleted the Perk, what would happen to the Perk? Alice wanted to know how it all worked out, and she could definitely afford to screw around with her [Student] class a bit. The Perks from the [Student] class didnât matter much to her, and although she hadnât reached level 10 in her [Student] class yet she already knew the Perks from the class were rather unimpressive. It was perfect experimental fodder after she broke down her fisherwoman class, since Alice had a very easy time reacquiring and levelling up the class. The biggest thing Alice had to pay attention to was which experiment chain had higher priority. She wanted to both experiment with making System seeds, and also see how the Perk interacted with secondary classes, and both required {Broken Seed} to do anything. However, with three and a half uses every two weeks instead of one, she would be able to learn much more.
After that, Alice quickly ran through her other Perk options, before making three more selections.
Super Speed Reading
Requirements: Scholar level 45 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Perception 100 or higher
While reading any form of written text, you can read and process information ten times faster than before. Your comprehension abilities are also greatly enhanced while reading (note - this bonus only applies to things you are reading. If you are reading and doing something else at the same time, only reading gets this comprehension bonus).
Alice took {Super Speed Reading} because she spent so much time reading every day, and yet there were still hundreds, or even thousands of reports, books, and pieces of information left in the academy library that she had no hope of accessing within the next few months, or even within the next few years. The Library collected more books and rotated out old books semi-frequently, keeping only the most well known and useful older books around, and Alice found the idea of reading through books much more quickly appealing. With this Perk, Alice could probably finish a smaller experiment report within a few minutes of reading, and might be able to finish even a longer book within thirty or forty minutes. That reading speed was absolutely phenomenal, and Alice felt it was worth spending a Perk slot on it.
Delve into the Arcane
Requirements: Scholar level 50 or higher, Magic 150 or higher, Intelligence 100 or higher, some sort of Perk which gives you the ability to learn information, rarity eight or higher Achievement related to Magic and Research
If you have spent at least an hour learning about magic within the past 24 hours, your mana regeneration rate is increased by 100% (This multiplier takes effect AFTER accounting for all other Perks you have that multiplies mana regeneration, working multiplicatively instead of additively).
When Alice saw this Perk, she took it almost immediately. Her current mana regeneration rate was 2.5% of her maximum capacity ever hour, meaning she needed 40 hours to completely recharge. This put an upper limit on the amount of enchanting she could do every day, and also meant that she needed to carefully manage the amount of mana she spent during classes if she wanted to remain economically stable.
This Perk would just double her mana regeneration to 5%, and would boost both her economic stability and her ability to train and enchant things. Considering how much time and energy she spent on learning about magic, Alice was pretty sure this Perk would have been active for almost every second of time she had been in this world since the moment she had unlocked her first magic seed. The difficulty of keeping this Perk active was trivial for her, and the benefits were definitely sizeable.
Finally, Alice grabbed her level 50 Scientist Perk.
The Science of mana deprivation
Requirements: Scientist level 50 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Must have extensively experimented with mana and lack of mana and its effects on other creatures and/or oneself, Magic 150 or higher, Pure mana seed (or similar seed) present.
You may use your mana tendrils to interfere with mana, allowing you to create manaless fields at will given enough time or otherwise allowing you to prevent mana from interfering with your experiments.
Note 1: The farther away the mana is, the more difficult and mentally draining it will be to activate this Perk. It is advised you use this on areas near you.
Note 2: Please remember that interfering with mana controlled by other people will be far more mentally taxing than manipulating the same amount of mana would be if it were uncontrolled.
Alice had been pretty surprised when she had seen this Perk, mostly because it seemed so⦠unusual by System standards. As far as Alice could tell⦠this Perk did a few things for her. First, it made setting up a manaless field much easier, saving her a lot of labor, enchanting materials, and time if she wanted to do an experiment without mana getting in the way. This was a minor effect, but one that Alice welcomed, since it would finally let her run experiments outside of Ceciliaâs workshop.
However, much more importantly, as far as Alice could tell, this would let her prevent other Mages from using mana if she could get one of her mana tendrils in contact with theirs. This provided a very situational but very powerful antimagic ability for her, giving her a completely unexpected combat ability boost from a class she had never expected to provide her with combat options.
And, most interesting of all, Alice wondered if this could prevent the activation of Perks. As far as Alice could tell, most Perks worked by utilizing System mana to do stuff. Normally, people couldnât interfere with System mana even if they had this Perk, because they wouldnât be able to see it in the first place. However, Alice could see System mana perfectly clearly, and had long gotten used to cornering System mana with her own even when it tried to escape. If that was the case⦠maybe she could just outright prevent Perks from working? She had no idea if it would work or not, but it was a very interesting idea that Alice found herself eager to try.
Alice couldnât stop grinning to herself as she analyzed all of her gains from the experiments she had done, before she walked out of the hallway. She started humming a tune from Earth to herself, since she was feeling especially cheerful.
As she passed by Cecilia, Cecilia noticed her grinning and humming to herself.
âProductive experiment today?â Asked the other girl, without looking up from her enchantment.
âVery,â said Alice, grinning. âI donât have a solution for Borisâs problem yet, but I think Iâm on the way to getting one. Or at least I got a big clue about how everything works behind the scenes, and I can take it in really interesting directions. I just need a bit more time, and I can figure out how all of this fits together.â
Cecilia nodded, smiling faintly at Aliceâs joy. âJust make sure you pay attention. The Society is getting even crazier recently, and I donât know why, but theyâre making the recent problems with the System even more dangerous. Figuring out whatâs going on is hard enough without those guys also stirring up trouble. If you stick out too much, they might come after you regardless of the consequences, especially if it looks like you would be able to help them with their research.â
âHopefully that wonât happen, but Iâm starting to wonder if whatever is going wrong with the System is an even bigger danger than the Society. If the System breaks down⦠what happens?â
âIf the System stopped working entirely? I⦠have no idea,â said Cecilia, frowning. âGiven how much it seems to help out behind the scenes, a world without the System⦠is probably one without humans in it? If everyone suddenly lost all of their levels and Perks, thatâs what I imagine would happen. But the fact that we kept our Perks, Levels, and Attributes even when we cut ourselves off from the System in previous experiments probably means that even if the System collapsed tomorrow, we wouldnât lose what weâve already acquired. However, when I think of children born in the future, I canât imagine many of them survivingâ¦â Cecilia frowned, sinking into thought.
Alice sighed, shaking her head. âIâll do my best to stay out of danger, but Iâm starting to think thereâs no way to stay safe no matter what. In the end, I might need to brave the Societyâs attention or stand to the side and watch as whatever is going wrong unfolds.â
Ceciliaâs frown grew deeper, before she also sighed. âIâll start training up my combat classes a bit more, in case weâre forced into a dead end and something happens. I hope it doesnât come to that, but⦠if something really does go horribly wrong, Iâll be there for you, okay?â Cecilia shook her head. âBut do your best to make sure it doesnât come to that. Iâm only a little over level 50, and my primary classes are [Enchanter] and [Merchant]. Neither of those are very handy in a fight, and while I do have some self-protection enchantments on me, I would rather not test their effectiveness on some combat-oriented level 70 come to kidnap you in the middle of the night or something.â
âIâll do my best,â said Alice, grinning mirthlessly at Cecilia. At the same time, she decided that she needed to finish rebuilding her second generation of self-protection enchantments sooner rather than later. She also hoped she wouldnât ever tangle with the Society of Starry Eyes. But with the way things were unfolding now, Alice wasnât sure if that was possible anymore.